The NYC Roommate Girl is Having a Spiritual Crisis

There’s two young women going viral on TikTok in a financial roommate drama meltdown where one is struggling to pay her rent and is defending herself.

In case you missed it, the viral NYC Roommate TikTok drama revolves around a 30-part series posted by creator EK (@Cozy Grocery) about being unexpectedly “evicted” from her Bushwick sublet. The situation quickly became a cautionary tale about oversharing online after her former roommate, Marlyn, stepped forward with competing accounts of the living situation. The creator claimed she was blindsided, struggled with housing insecurity, and started a GoFundMe to cover living costs. The primary leaseholder released videos indicating the sublease had always been intended to end, and that the creator’s inability to earn enough to qualify for a permanent lease was the actual issue. Viewers and pop culture commentators debated the situation heavily, and most ultimately sided with the leaseholder.

I notice that everyone’s picking a side, but nobody’s asking the right question. This series is actually a spiritual story wearing a financial/political costume. I have often found that money problems and the spiritual condition are the same problem, they’re just never viewed that way in our mainstream secular world. I’ve lived both sides of this, as a 9-to-5er and as someone who found another way to work, and I can tell you the version of me who couldn’t master her material world was also the version who couldn’t access real love, real honesty, or real peace.

There’s a concept I always bring myself back called Good Householder, a spiritual archetype found across religions for the person who masters both the practical and spiritual sides of life instead of running from one to chase the other. So, in this post we’ll actually dig into:

• What Good Householder means

• How roommate girl could use it to get herself out of this mess

• Why it’s a much harder status to reach as a 9-to-5er than as someone who works for themselves.

My own side tangent (with tea): I think part of why this story is so hot is its timing. It’s NYC, right when Mayor Mamdani wants to pass rent limits. A 30-part series about a young woman facing a housing crisis is perfect for shifting the culture, homelessness isn’t just the person suffering on the street, it’s a young Gen Z/millennial woman like you, and that’s why you need to fight the good fight now.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some partnership between her and Mamdani surfaces down the line, or if his team had a hand in shaping the series. I’ve been offered collaborations from Mamdani and his associates myself, where I wouldn’t have had to disclose it as paid, since political and investment money isn’t regulated by the FTC. Influencers aren’t legally required to say a post is sponsored. I think that’s crazy, but I’m just the messenger, I don’t have the power to change FTC regulations for political campaigns. This is just an alleged hunch I have from my own opportunities offered to me BTS in the last 9 months.

Also, the leaseholder Maryln gives influencer trained presentation skills on camera when explaining her situation. If she just a regular girl without a following, she’d be way less composed, defensive, etc… It just feels off and a little staged to me.

Anyways, back to my hunch that her issue is more spiritual than financial….

This whole public meltdown reminds me of the concept of Good Householder. It’s a spiritual concept held across many different religions, each with its own route to get there, but the most holistic definition that encapsulates all of them is: an individual who masters both the spiritual and practical realities of daily life. Rather than withdrawing from society to pursue inner peace, a good householder integrates discipline, mindfulness, and service into their everyday duties, balancing family, work, and community.

Good Householder isn’t commonly talked about when discussing spirituality. Recluses, monks, and people who’ve committed to a life of poverty are typically the only archetypes we associate with spiritual enlightenment. But there’s actually another way, and that’s Good Householder status.

In short, you achieve Good Householder by reaching a point with your gifts for the world where you can make enough money to support your actual destined lifestyle. Once that financial security is achieved, you can make exponential impact on your community: being fully present with others, financially supporting others, being a present parent, having the extra time to volunteer. This tracks closely with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once each level of the pyramid is fulfilled, you reach self-actualization. In his later work, Maslow added a sixth, even higher tier called self-transcendence, looking beyond the ego to serve a higher goal, altruism, or spiritual awakening. That sixth tier is what I’m referring to as Good Householder.

Here’s why this relates to work: the 9-5 job structure limits your earning potential and where you can even live, creating an invisible ceiling on the journey to Good Householder. Staying financially independent through your own skills and gifts becomes much harder, and nobody calls this what it is: a spiritual crisis. I do. 9-5ers get pushed through the rat race chasing an illusion of financial independence that most never actually reach, and most don’t even know it. Unable to truly master the material world or comfortably support themselves and their families, they can’t become self-actualized, can’t become Good Householders for their community. I’d argue this is why third spaces have disappeared. Why women are in the workplace more than ever but still unhappy. Why people are buying houses and starting families later. Why we’re in a loneliness epidemic. No one’s reaching Good Householder status to become an altruistic, selfless steward of their community and family.

If you want to be spiritually fulfilled, in whatever way that looks like for your own religion or practice, and you’re not surrendering all material things to become a monk or nun, then my argument is you have to become a Good Householder. Christian monks, nuns, and priests, along with Buddhist monks, represent the other side of that coin. Most Christian priests take a vow of poverty, surrendering the ability to own land or assets, with income coming from their order and any money earned going back to the community rather than their own pocket. Buddhist monks operate similarly: no personal property, everything held by the monastery, surviving entirely on daily donations from the lay community.

While Christianity and Buddhism appear to be worlds apart, they do share a common archetype at the heart of their communities: the householder. We typically only view the most spiritually ascended person as a monk or a recluse. Instead there is a concept called Good Householder which addresses being real person who manages a household, handles money, and navigates the practical material world while maintaining their spiritual integrity.

In the biblical sense, you aren’t an owner, but a steward. Your income, influence, and your talents are essentially on loan from God, and it’s your job to manage those assets with excellence.

This includes:

• Directing your wealth and resources toward serving others instead of just hoarding them.

• Owning the responsibility for the spiritual and moral health of your household.

• Cultivating a home of hospitality and order where the door is always open and the vibe is respectful.

Buddhism clearly distinguishes between recluses and laypeople, but the Buddha made it clear that spiritual enlightenment isn’t reserved for just monks. In the Dighajanu Sutta, he outlined specific material and spiritual benchmarks for achieving success as a householder.

For material mastery in this life:

• Putting in the work to earn an honest living through your skills.

• Being a good steward of what you’ve earned rather than being reckless with it.

• Surrounding yourself with a community of people who have their act together.

• Living within your means and avoiding both stinginess and mindless spending.

For spiritual growth beyond the material:

• Developing deep conviction in your spiritual path.

• Committing to a disciplined and ethical way of living.

• Practicing altruism by giving generously to the community.

• Seeking actual wisdom through understanding rather than blind adherence.

Both of these traditions treat being a householder as a sign of spiritual maturity, not a “lesser” version of enlightenment compared to monks. Jesus even used the householder as a metaphor for a wise teacher who can draw from a wealth of experience.

The takeaway is that how you handle your practical duties and your material home is the ultimate reflection of your spiritual condition. And vice versa.

As a disclaimer: obviously the summary of both religions input on Good Householder is extremely broad. There are so many sects of Christanity and Buddhisim which can change these definitions sometimes drastically. The point wasn’t to represent every religious persons exact views but rather to demonstrate that this concept of Good Householder does exist throughout many religious paths to show its validity.

The difference between my time as a 9-to-5er and as a self-employed person is that when I had a job, I had no understanding that my struggles in the material world were a direct result of my spiritual condition, and vice versa, that how I handled (or failed to handle) material problems had the power to affect my spiritual condition. I couldn’t find unconditional love until I found a way to unconditionally love myself enough to walk away from gross entry-level tech jobs and find another way to work that actually fulfilled my Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once free from that struggle, I became a more honest and loving version of myself, for myself and for others.

Personal anecdote aside, here’s why this matters: when we haven’t mastered our spiritual condition by better navigating the material world, we act like a worse version of ourselves. I view the NYC apartment girl as an immature, dishonest baby. It takes one to know one. Every time I’ve been a wallowing baby about business stress or financial responsibilities, it’s because my spiritual condition is a mess and I need to fix my material problems too. I’ll blame other people or circumstances I can’t control for my own suffering, completely bypassing what’s actually in my control and fixable.

For NYC roommate girl, she can fix her situation quickly. Short-term subletting is stressful enough on its own, but she’s also pursuing an unstable business path, being a full-time artist in one of the most competitive cities in the world, which means her tolerance for other BS is already razor thin. She’s continuously putting herself in short-term living situations that add to the instability she’s already drowning in. By her own admission, her creative business isn’t paying well yet. So the material problem she needs to master is finding a more permanent, affordable living situation. And spiritually, she needs to uncover what this instability is actually giving her. Is it a pattern she keeps repeating to manage her fear of the unknown, one that then fuels self-destructive tendencies, like broadcasting her financial issues in a 30-part series for the public to judge?

She also needs to get real about whether NYC is the right move for her right now. New York isn’t the only place to make it as an artist. She could build her digital presence somewhere more affordable with better housing and still grow her sales. It’s hard to make good art when your housing is unstable, so the constant instability she’s putting herself through, even if she’s telling herself struggling in NYC is how you “make it”, might be exactly what’s keeping her from succeeding.

I don’t live in NYC as a creative because I don’t think the cost of living is worth the quality of life it buys you. I’d pay three times what I pay now in Colorado for the same size house, same story with health insurance, and so on. Would it be cool and sexy to say I’m a 29-year-old work commentator and writer living in NYC? Sure, there’s real social clout in that, and my brand does run on social clout. But I don’t want to spend 15K+ a month on regular expenses to maintain that lifestyle. I still go to New York a few times a year for work, so I spend the money to visit instead of spending far more to live there full time. That may change for me later in life, since I’ve lost my fiancé and the future as I knew it is shifting in ways I don’t fully understand yet.

Going digital also means you’re not strapped to the cost of living or the salary benchmarks of wherever you live. This is another issue I have with the 9-to-5 model: you’re capped by the salary ranges set by the consulting firms and biggest employers in your area. It’s a fake ceiling. Now that I sell products online, do brand partnerships, write a book, and run multiple revenue streams, I can earn what a New York creator earns without New York expenses. Moving away from NYC might feel like an impossible sacrifice to her right now, but there may be a spiritual tweak she needs to make: reframing what a “good” home or living situation actually needs to look like. Sacrifice is deeply spiritual, and the modern world, especially Gen Z and millennials, shies away from it hard. We’re sacrifice-averse, when in reality the sacrifice we’re avoiding might not even be a real sacrifice, it might be the exact thing required for financial and spiritual success. I’m very pro-sacrifice when it comes to my own spiritual and material issues.

Also, also: she could get a part-time job. I had a lazy girl job in tech while my business couldn’t yet sustain my full expenses, and it was a great way to buy some financial security while building something longer term. Constantly moving and apartment hunting is time-consuming and erodes the creative energy her income actually depends on. When you choose to generate your own income instead of having a boss, a set salary, and PTO, everything in every part of your life becomes your business’s business. There’s no separation anymore between personal life and business, they affect each other constantly. I find that beautiful and fun, but when you’re struggling, it can spiral fast.

Also, also: what she’s experiencing is spiritual warfare. That term gets overused and ruined by Christian neo-cons, but it’s real. For her, it shows up as being so consumed by her material problems that they become what she worships. She keeps making bad financial choices because she can’t see a path forward beyond the “starving artist” narrative, common in both the creative and spiritual worlds, where people believe repeated bad material decisions are somehow noble because Jesus or Buddha lived in poverty too. Taken further, this belief frames earning more than the bare minimum as pure greed. My belief is that God just wants us to master our material problems with Him and by His grace. When we have more than we need, He wants us to steward it ethically, responsibly, and with love. That’s it. There’s no extra spiritual credit for being a creative who only takes exactly what she needs from the market and therefore has no savings and no idea if she’ll make rent next month. It completely blocks the path to Good Householder. Spiritual psychosis can even set in, where we get stuck doing breathwork classes and ayahuasca retreats to try to fix our IRS debt. There’s a point where this kind of spiritual martyrdom, common among creative and spiritual people, stops being divinely inspired and becomes just another destructive false belief.

I may come off harsh in this post. It may seem like I’m just putting her issues on blast and treating her like a whiny baby. TBH, she kind of is being one. But my greater point is to use that viral moment to explain this esoteric way I live that’s hard to put into words but might be useful for your own financial and spiritual pursuits. I view my “work” as a human as balancing my material and spiritual needs. I don’t view my life’s work as “being an influencer named Ms. Anti Work.” Corporate teaches you your most important work is being an accountant for a B2B SaaS company powered by AI. Wrong. There are layers to our existence. (Hint: this is also why I titled my upcoming book You Are Not Your Job.)

Sometimes it’s easier to see ourselves in a viral moment or a famous person than to confront ourselves directly, radical honesty is hard. And since she’s putting herself on blast in a 30-part series, I view this as fair game. I would never take a private scenario from you, a follower or a friend in real life, and put it on blast here on my blog. But if she wants to play the game of fame and virality, the critique is fair game too. I learned this fast scaling Lazy Girl Jobs. I don’t get to reap all the benefits of the press coverage, interviews, and attention and then be a baby about it: “waaa, why doesn’t this other commentator agree with me,” “why is Kevin O’Leary so obsessed with my work ethic.” I know because I did it. Criticism is the risk that comes with the reward. I don’t get to have it my way, where everyone just oohs and ahhs over me. That’s insanity, and an attempt to control the general population, which is impossible.

In practice, the work to fix one side or the other can look separate. Example: I’m being a whiny baby about a bad hire in my business, or frustrated I have to pay for a new window and that it’s “not fair.” To fix that, I might meditate. From the outside that looks nuts, meditating doesn’t fix the hire or the window. But it works, because I’m changing my spiritual condition to better approach the material problem. You can’t do this whenever you want at a 9-to-5. You can’t just walk away from your desk for an hour to meditate. You’d look crazy and eventually lose your job for it. I’m not an HR specialist, nor do I care to be one.

Same thing in reverse: if I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety, I’ll eventually realize it’s because my spiritual condition is off, I can no longer embody the faith required to operate at Good Householder. But the fix isn’t always more prayer or more spiritual practice. Sometimes the fix is paying down debt or handling a financial situation, and that’s what restores my faith.

So I view my “work” in life as mastering both the material and the spiritual, to my best ability, whenever I can. That’s the journey, the suffering, the contrast I want to take on. That is Good Householder. The other path is becoming a nun or a monk, and I’m not comfortable giving up my physical things. So here’s something to noodle on for yourself: are you built to take on Good Householder too? If so, what material things do you need to take on, fix, or walk away from? What spiritual practices could improve your spiritual condition? And how do the two realms blend together for you, in a way that helps you prioritize your everyday to-dos and goals?